Such a good weekend!
A buddy of mine does snowboard, mountain bike & outdoors films/videos, he and I have been talking about shooting the bug since it was a project in my garage. We've bounced around different ideas, but still haven't gotten around to doing anything. This past week, Taylor sweetened the pot the little with the addition of a RED Epic Camera. As if that wasn't good enough, his friends from Sea to Sky Cable Cams were looking to do some testing with a rally car. Hmmmmm....
Taylor's current demo reel.
Sea to Sky Cable Cam's demo reel.
For those who don't know what an Red camera is, think the Porsche GT3 of the camera world. It shoots in 5k, and super high frames per second (super slow-mo). To give you an idea of the quality...
Can't really turn down an opportunity like that!
Started off in the garage. David prepping a shot.
Later, Taylor setting up the Red as a POV cam. A wee bit bigger then a GoPro :P
Cable Cam rigging...
I won't have the video for a while, but will be sure to post it up once Taylor's had a change to edit something for me. In the meantime though, I did lap after lap of the section of road we had set aside. "faster", "slower", "can you put the car here?", "more show-ie", "that was great...we nailed it...better do it again just in case". Now I remember why I avoid video shoots! haha
One of the lines required getting close to the raspberry bushes. They ended up all down the side of the car.
iphone pic...I think
The road section we were working on was less then a half km long, with 6 corners and an uphill section. It was top of third gear type of stuff, though I was making it 7 to 8 corners for the runs they wanted it more "showy". For some of the shots I wasn't running it end to end. So as you can see, a lot of laps and takes to get all the shots they wanted to get. I'm not complaining, getting to play on a closed road at full bore is worth every second!
At one point in the early half I smoked a big rock, and following a large bang was sure I flatted the driver's side tire. We stopped, jumped out and my tire was fine. Hmmm…as I was going around the front side, my buddy Taylor (who was 'co-driving' at the time) says to me "pretty sure it's your side", yup no flat on his side either. Remember all those to-do lists I wrote down in my notebook, crossing off items as go? There was one item on the front suspension that I didn't do, and figured I would catch in that "check all the lists" step before running. Cotter pins on the sway bar ends? Based on the fact that the passenger side one didn't have a pin, and the driver's side had spat it's parts all down the road…I'm gonna guess I missed that step! Only part of the car (beside the rear axles) where I didn't replace everything with nylock nuts and/or safety wire. A quick zip home (in a friend's truck) to get some spare bits, jack and axle stands…and we were on our way to a backwoods repair. Ever try and compress/jam those stupid things together in the middle of nowhere? Yeah, not wanting to do that again! Other then this potentially disastrous event, the car ran flawless all day.
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Today, it was all about clean up, damage assessment and check of all fasteners to ensure I hadn't missed anything else. I washed the car twice, first at the coin-wash to pressure wash as much dust and dirt off as I could, and then a regular hand wash upon returning home. The inside was filthy, even the dust had dust on it.
Once the interior was cleaned out, I started on the damage assessment. The paint on the wheels took the expected beating and chipping.
And the raspberry bushes left me with some passenger side stripes that I'll need to polish out this week. Hard to photograph on a silver car, sadly not hard to see in person though!
The gravel road isn't a polished prepared "loose surface" road designed for road traffic. We were using a logging access road, so the stones are bigger. Sometimes much bigger. But hey, gotta use what you got! The rocks do take their toll on the car though...
Slight dent on the driver's side rear fender...
Slightly larger dent on the passenger side rear fender. Kinda wish I had made that flap just 1" longer! The rock has completely crushed the lip of the fender and pushed it out about 1/4".
The muffler is saying "make the skidplates dumbass!"
About this time I was thinking to myself "why don't I build track cars?" And then I removed the wheels. Seems I might be switching to alloy wheels sooner then I had anticipated! This is the passenger rear wheel:
The passenger front has one small dent/flatspot on the inside edge. In true rally fashion, however, both driver's side wheels are 100% perfect. Why anyone chooses to be a co-driver I'll never understand. Now, initially I was a little down on myself for doing this, as i have to go find a replacement. But then I checked the wheel and it's holding air to the exact psi I had set it to. My friend Gord has repaired a number of rally wheels (steel and alloy) using a special tool, so really this shouldn't be so bad. I grabbed my copy of Gord's special tool, and went to work. Good as new! (or in this case, good enough :P)
The engine bay is starting to look quite scruffy, but I have a gravel rally event before our local VW show..so I figure I'll do the full detail after that. For now it was just a quick clean to get the main dirt out.
I did decide to do an airfilter cleaning, as they showed some signs of needing it.
Car is now cleaned, checked and ready for work tomorrow. Just need to pop the re-oiled air filters back on.
-Dave